If it was only that easy to get around these Freedom crushers! Once in a while, I am directed to a site that is definitely NOT Right-of-Center and this time the tipster sent me to Miscellany: Blue, a rather progressive site. The occasion was an interview done by Dave Ridley with Progressive NH State House Rep Raymond Gagnon who made a statement that enforces a stereotype of Progressives that Progressives themselves have given to the Right:
Ridley: Any vote for a government program is a vote for violence against your neighbor because you’re going to force them to pay for it through threat of violence.
Gagnon: Forcing people to pay for things is not aggression…. [But] if you continually choose to not pay your taxes, year after year after year, there will be a consequence to that action. Yes, that’s true.
Ridley: They will drag you out of your house. They will kill you if you fight back.
Gagnon: That’s because you’ve chosen not to pay your taxes…. You’ve chosen not to be part of the team, the collective.
Now, Dave is more the Libertarian and certainly makes sure that the Progressive he is interviewing know that his main stance is that Government IS Force. I agree in principle but not in the intensity that Dave employs; it is not how I would put it. However, Dave IS right in that at the end of the day, aggression will be used if payment to the Government is not made – no one can deny that either either one’s property is taken or one’s Liberty is taken (er, jail).
However, my eyes did a double take – Gagnon falls right into the moral pit.
if you fight back, the State has the moral right to kill you. Does he also believe in drones to do so? For as much as the Democrats say that Republicans are the cold-hearted ones, look at the “compassion” Gagnon displays (or lack thereof): your killing by the State was simply because you chose to not pay taxes. Now, I know relatively few people that chose to not pay their taxes simply “because”. No indication that perhaps, just perhaps because of the current bad economic climate (can we NOW start blaming Obama instead of Bush??) that someone CAN’T pay their taxes.
But I have never, EVER, heard the implication that paying one’s taxes is a team effort, that it is the entrance to “the community”. Shades of a pep rally (“what do you mean, you don’t support the TEAM!”). In his words, I detect that it isn’t about the individual at all, it is about the collective – it is pre-eminent above you and me. And if you decide not to be a part, well, then off with your head! His words also seem to say that the normal state of being IS to be part of the collective – that you must be diseased or mentally ill not to want to be part of the group. Disdain results – hey, if you can’t keep up with the group, well, you’re roadkill (and deservedly so).
It seems that being part of the collective (the Borg?) means that assimilation has an entrance fee, too.
Oh, btw, Susan The Bruce (comment at that post)? Since your collective horde (like NH State Rep Cynthia Chase) seem to be fleeing the current Blue Model States and re-implement dictatorial policies, I have no problem with the Free Staters coming here and having the State not go on an ideology other than what our Constitutions say (as opposed to Progressives implementing the incremental Marxism promulgated by the Frankfurt School) where it seems the only choices we prols get to chose are who to have sex with and to have an abortion. Some life, eh?
As Miscellany: Blue has:
The full interview, parts one and two, is available from Ridley Report.
(H/T: You know who you are!)
